Category: Miles

  1. Do this now: Enroll your American Express Business Platinum cards in the new $50 quarterly Hilton credit. A quick Q&A:

    – Will this work with HiltonGiftCards.com? Probably
    – Will this work buying gift cards at a hotel? Yes
    – Will this work at Hilton restaurant? Probably, stick to resorts to be sure
    – Will this work for a regular hotel to pay your bill? Yes
    – Is AmEx going to raise the annual fee? Probably not in 2025, but yes
    – Is Dell going away in 2H2025? We can only pray
    – What’s America’s favorite fruit? Banana
    – Did anyone make it this far? Yes

    If you’ve got a bunch of business Platinums, just make sure that you get an email for each card. Sometimes the site enrolls the wrong card, or reenrolls a card that you didn’t select.
  2. Avianca LifeMiles can be purchased for as little as 1.27 cents each with a sale running through the end of December.

    Conventional wisdom in the hobby says “never buy miles except to top-off your account for a redemption.” The wisdom is showing its age when transferable points are cashed out easily into interest bearing accounts, and points costs have dipped below 1.3 cents. For example, yesterday I was looking at an ANA First Class redemption that was 114,000 LifeMiles. I could have paid about $$1,447 to buy those miles directly rather than transferring miles in. Obviously, there’s more to come on this topic in the future.
  3. Southwest has extended its schedule for fall travel including Labor Day weekend through October 1. Booking a cheap flight that’s far out and within two weeks of a more expensive flight that you actually want to take is a great way to hedge booking costs, assuming flight schedule change between then and now.
  4. AA is retooling its AAdvantage program for 2025. The quick summary:

    – New million-miler tiers at four (Platinum Pro) and five (Executive Platinum) million miles
    – Systemwide Upgrades will last through the end of the elite year after March 1, 2025
    – Redeem miles for inflight food, probably at a terrible rate
    – New Loyalty Point awards, all low value

    You still can’t earn million-miler tiers with Loyalty Points, only with flown miles.
  5. Giant, Giant Foods, Martins, and Stop & Shop stores have 8x-10x points on Lululemon and Barnes & Noble gift cards, depending on chain through Thursday, December 19.

$50 breakfast at a Hilton Garden Inn in Lubbock (prolly, I can’t be bothered to fact check).

  1. There’s a new public link on the front page of Delta.com for increased sign-up bonuses on American Express cobranded cards. There’s a second link buried at creditcard.delta.com too, so try both if one doesn’t work. Unlike most times when the blog-o-sphere is saying “more people targeted” because someone said so on reddit, this time it actually appears to be true; No, I’m not bitter, you’re bitter! Anyway:

    – Reserve: 100,000 miles after $5,000 spend in six months
    – Platinum: 90,000 miles after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Gold: 70,000 miles after $2,000 spend in six months
    – Reserve Business: 110,000 miles after $10,000 spend in six months
    – Platinum Business: 100,000 miles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Gold Business: 80,000 miles after 4 $4,00 spend in six months, waived annual fee

    If you get the popup, try the other link which often has different popup criteria.
  2. If you have money locked up with Yotta or Juno thanks to the Synapse FinTech collapse, check your email for a payout link from one of the underlying banks that was servicing accounts, Evolve. There are multiple reports of payments being correct and several where people are short, at least one by over $94,000, though it’s not clear whether that money was put at Evolve by Synapse or put somewhere else. To find the email, look for one of:

    – Email: [email protected]
    – Subject: Return of Synapse Brokerage’s End User Funds

    Don’t forget to add “in:anywhere” to your search to look through spam and other folders in your inbox. If you don’t have your email yet, there’s a completely unverified rumor that it may take until the 16th to send all emails.

    In related news, apparently Evolve’s CTO and CEO/President have been terminated. I’m not saying that’s unjustified especially after Evolve leaked customer information in a data-breach, but it’s strange to see everyone going after Evolve leadership instead of Synapse leadership.
  3. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to British Airways Avios, and by extension all airlines that use Avios through December 1. (Thanks to jtevy)
  4. The American Express Centurion Business card will have a cap on its 50% airfare booking rebate at 3 Million rebated points annually starting on February 1.

You can’t hold someone accountable if they can’t account I guess?

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running through November 5 on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards, excluding Amazon.

    Don’t stress that Amazon is excluded though, you can get Amazon at 13-16% off with Pepper most days provided that you think signs of their imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. Yes, they lose money on every transaction but they make it up in volume.
  2. Alaska Airlines has an award sale through tomorrow, and as usual it’s pretty good. I’m seeing:

    – Transcons at 9,000 points
    – Hawaii at 9,000 points
    – Alaska at 20,000 points
    – Mexico at 9,000 points

    These continue to be the best award sales that no-one talks about, especially since you’re still able to transfer Membership Rewards to Hawaiian, then Hawaiian to Alaska MileagePlan miles.
  3. It brings me absolutely zero pleasure to report that the American Express Business Platinum’s $200 semi-annual Dell credit has been reported to continue through at the least the first half of 2025 according to multiple, separately sourced data points.

    I was very much looking forward to not worrying about Dell, so this is my October surprise I guess?
  4. Breeze Airways has 40% off of round-trip base fares with promo code GETCOMFY booked by tomorrow night for travel from October 29 through May 13, 2025 with black several blackout dates around major holidays.

    In related news, Breeze has gone from being a flaming money-pit in 2023 to a profitable airline in a very short time, exactly the way that AA didn’t.
  5. Amtrak has a free companion promotion for its double lie-flat roomette tickets booked through the end of the month with promo code C104 for travel from November through the end of January, 2025. (thanks to DDG)

Happy Wednesday!

Pepper’s Spinal-Tap solution for solvency.

  1. Citi ThankYou Points has two new transfer bonuses:

    – 20% to Wyndham Rewards through November 16
    – 30% to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club through November 16

    The Wyndham bonus is great for the right use cases; it’s pretty easy to get 1-2 cents per point on a Wyndham or Vacasa booking. The bonus to Virgin Atlantic is mid at best, and don’t forget that (1) Chase has a higher 40% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, and (2) the Virgin Atlantic award chart is changing at the end of the month.
  2. Citi ThankYou Points also added Preferred Hotels as a transfer partner at 1:4 ratio. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because you can also book some Preferred Hotels with Choice Points which is also a Citi transfer partner. The transfer ratio is great taken at extreme face value because those points are worth somewhere between 0.4 and 1.0 cents each, but in practice availability is:

    – Decent for cash+points bookings
    – Awful for points only bookings
    – Better through the Choice program

    To explore, start on the points booking landing page, and note that you’ll need to create an account and login to see many of the rates. Frankly this program is the most Citi-esque hotel program I’ve ever encountered, so I guess it makes sense that they’re now Citi partners. (Thanks to newg33b)
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Look for lower fee cards, not all fees are the same

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Citi’s prototype robo-taxi is as weird as everything else they do.

  1. Alaska MileagePlan has upcoming changes in 2025:

    – Earn elite qualifying miles (EQMs) on award travel redemptions based on distance and ticket class, a minimum of 1 EQM per mile flown including partner redemptions
    – Earn 1 EQM per $3 spent on a co-brand credit card, up to $90,000 spend
    – Earn EQMs for mileage partners, especially the MileagePlan shopping portal
    – Milestone rewards like AA
    – Multi-partner award redemptions are coming this “winter”

    It’ll be relatively easy to earn MileagePlan status via manufactured spend next year, which when coupled with AA status, could make you a double oneworld Sapphire, capable of viewing the Double Rainbow.
  2. The speculation that Barclays would buy the GM credit card portfolio from Marcus Goldman Sachs has been confirmed, and cards will switch issuers in 2025.

    If you’re banned from Barlcays, getting a GM card may be a back-door way back in, but historically Barclays is tough on bans so I wouldn’t count on it.
  3. Do this now: Register for your targeted United Mileage Play offer. My offer was “Book and take a trip in a premium seat 2 times to earn 21,000 bonus miles.” My fine print says travel by December 13 and each ticket has to cost $500 before taxes and fees, so best case this is a +2x miles on spend deal.
  4. United has an economy award sale for travel to and from Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka, and Hong Kong at 35,000 miles in each direction for travel through February 25, 2025 booked by tonight, but only for Chase co-brand card holders. The regular saver price is 55,000 miles in each direction. (Thanks to DDG)
  5. American Express Offers has three more offers for hotel stays:

    – $100 back on $300+ at Radisson Blu or Cambria hotels through November 30
    – $100 back on $300+ at Small Luxury Hotels through December 31
    – $150 back on $650+ at The Hotel Collection properties through December 7

    The top two are gameable, the bottom one, probably not so much. How do you game these? As always, buying a gift card is the simplest way, but not the only way.

Happy Thursday!

Another important headline from around the US.

  1. Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running for two weeks, limit nine per transaction. The two week promotional window is odd, normally when promotions are extended it’s because either (1) people pick up other profitable things when in store for the promotion, or (2) there’s not enough volume to exhaust the promotional budget in one week, so they extend. Neither feels like the right explanation though.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Giftcards.com has returned to major airline shopping portals. As of this writing, they’re all at 1x and cashbackmonitor.com hasn’t refreshed, but I expect both of these to change soon. Stack with Citi Merchant Offers for 4% back on spend on up to $750.
  3. Bilt Rewards has two new transfer partners, which solves the, err, mystery of why some travel bloggers were at a Bilt offsite earlier this week. I wonder who paid for the offsite? Anyhoodles:

    – Accor Hotels at a 3:2 ratio
    – TAP Air Portugal at a 1:1 ratio

    Accor Hotels partners with Citi and Capital One but with a worse 2:1 transfer ratio. Accor Hotel points are worth about 2.2 cents per point with fixed redemption values and are often a great deal in the European equivalents of Lubbock, TX. TAP Air Portugal is a Capital One transfer partner with the same ratio as Bilt.
  4. Giant, Giant Food Stores, Martin’s, Stop & Shop have 2x points on Visa gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 or $2,000 per account depending on store. (Thanks to his eminence, Stephen at GCG)
  5. American Express Membership Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through November 10. Sweet spots:

    – Promo awards, which are mostly economy
    – Business class to and from Europe
    – European short-haul
    – Delta domestic short-haul

    The sweet spots don’t mean transfer speculatively though, you can often find bonuses of up to 30% in multiple bank flexible currencies.

Europe’s versions of Lubbock, like Lübeck Germany, look slightly nicer than the American equivalent.

Forward: Does it ever feel like we as a collective have the memory of guppies? We talked about an American Express Personal Gold 2025 4x dining cap of $50,000 in July and it’s not news anymore, right? Or is this crazy town? Please don’t answer, I probably won’t like what I hear.

  1. Do this now: Put a charge or two on each of your Bank of America credit cards in anticipation of avoiding fraud alerts on November 7, when you’ll get +2x on all spend up to $2,500 on every card account. (Thanks to TeddyH)
  2. American Express Offers has new travel related, partially gameable offers:

    – 20,000 Membership Rewards or $200 statement credit after $1,200 spend on Virgin Atlantic through November 30
    – 20,000 Membership Rewards or $200 statement credit after $1,000 spend on AirFrance or KLM through December 31

    It’s too bad the Virgin Red Synchrony Mastercard isn’t somehow also involved but that’s probably because it hadn’t been invented yet when AmEx cooked up the offer, at least according to what I just made up. (Thanks to FM)

  3. Frontier Airlines has 10,000 bonus miles for booking a roundtrip flight by tonight and completing travel before the end of 2025.

    As we all know, what’s even worse than a Frontier flight? More Frontier flights, that is unless you want to fly Des Moines, Iowa direct to Guadalajara Mexico; Frontier is the only airline that has that flight in the bag.

Happy Tuesday!

Guppy food.

  1. Do this now: Register for a targeted promotion for 50 or 100 American Airlines Loyalty Points earned per 1,000 miles redeemed through the end of the year, but only on new flights booked by October 7.
  2. There’s been a 120,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in 90 days link for upgrading an American Express Business Green or Gold card to a Platinum card floating around in the darker corners of the internet, and it’s now public. A few notes:

    – If you have a Green or Gold to upgrade, get employee cards first (see item #3)
    – Do the upgrade
    – Order 5 more employee cards with the new POID

    Don’t forget that spend on employee cards counts toward upgrade bonus spend. Also note that this link is of dubious origin so calibrate the reward to your risk tolerance scale. I went for this, but just because I did something doesn’t mean you should too; it might mean that you shouldn’t.
  3. The American Express Hilton Aspire resort credit now only works at a specific set of listed properties, providing further evidence that it’s easier to game these credits than to use them as intended.
  4. MasterCardGiftCard.com has a promotion for 100% off of purchase fees with promo code 100MCGIFT. There’s currently no expiration listed, but the email promoting the code has a copyright date of 2023 which should tell you something about Incomm gift card brands.

    These are Vanilla gift cards.
  5. Some Bank of America payment systems were offline yesterday and may be today too. It’s not you, they’re the problem it’s them.
  6. Amtrak has a promotion for a mystery, per-account bonus multiplier on fall travel through October 31 with registration. I got 2x on my account which means I’ll probably earn 2*0=0 points between now and Halloween. (Thanks to frequentflyerbonuses)

Obligatory photo of Bank of America’s payment processing data center.